SiteMorse TM research identifies the 2004 online Christmas winners

SiteMorseô, the leading automated website diagnostic service, today announces the publication of research, commissioned by NMQA (www.nmqa.com), an independent specialist testing consultancy, to rank the performance and user experience of the top 20 retail brand websites.

With 52 per cent of households in the UK (12.8 million) having internet access this year, compared with just nine per cent (2.2 million) in 1998*, this festive season looks set to see the biggest growth in online transactions to date. The increase in internet usage has prompted NMQA to commission SiteMorseô to identify which retailers are ready for the online Christmas rush.

The SiteMorseô research study examined the top 20 sites for a fixed seven day period, at 15 minute intervals and tested the homepages of each site for response time and errors, two factors which will determine whether a user will choose to shop on a particular website.

The results showed:

Amazon.co.uk came top with 100 per cent availability and usability

Toys R Us (www.toysrus.co.uk) was second with 100 per cent availability but 99.75 per cent usability

The least usable website was www.asda.com, which each time tested, failed to meet the basic standard

The criteria set by SiteMorseô is for the front page of each site to respond within 1.5 seconds to a request, and to have a download speed greater than five kilobytes per second. This testing equates to the minimum response time expected by an average user.

The good news is that all the top 20 sites tested were available for 98 per cent of the duration of the test. However the testing also revealed that although the site availability was good, there were problems in the number of errors which occurred on the available pages. One example was found on www.debenhams.com where a window that should have displayed images of items for sale, was in fact blank.

SiteMorseô also carried out itís standard MorseMarkô testing process on the first 250 pages of each of the websites tested during the seven day period. This examines the website performance, accessibility, metadata, HTML quality and function of the sites.

Two high street fashion brands came top of the league with Next (www.next.co.uk) at number one and Topshop (www.topshop.co.uk) in second place. At the bottom of the table, representing the poorest performing site overall, was HMV (www.hmv.co.uk)

Highlights of the report include:

Website Compliance

In the compliance sector, SiteMorseô tests the standard of HTML code used as well as website compliance to W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) guidelines on accessibility for disabled users. Since the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act in October, all sites are required to comply with the Act.

Only two sites were fully compliant with Priority Level One ñ www.marksandspencer.com and www.dell.co.uk
Five of the 20 sites had no pages that complied with the mandatory accessibility requirements (Priority level one standard) ñ these were: www.toysrus.co.uk, www.play.com, www.pcworld.co.uk, www.kelkoo.co.uk and www.hmv.co.uk
All sites failed priority level two standards


Website Function

The website functionality category examined errors that prevent a website from operating correctly and which include broken links, DNS settings, server errors, missing files and faulty e-mail links.

Next (www.next.co.uk) and Topshop (www.topshop.co.uk) topped the site function category with no errors
The site with the highest amount of errors was Tesco (www.tesco.com) with over 3,500

Website Speed

Both the average speed at which the server transmitted data to the SiteMorseô system during the test and the average time taken by the server to respond to a request to access an object were measured.

The site with the highest download speed was Next (www.next.co.uk)
www.argos.co.uk had the slowest download speed and was 50 times slower than Next


Scott McKibben, Commercial Director NMQA said: ëWe chose SiteMorse to carry out this research for us as its monitoring and web-tools are fast becoming the industry standard for online performance measurement. By building in the seven day user experience monitoring we have been able to get a detailed picture of exactly when and how the top websites are performing. Our conclusion is that online retailers should consider the experience they are offering consumers. A slow or faulty site will result in consumers shopping elsewhere. Early diagnosis of faults will avoid the more expensive option of rectifying performance issues once the site is live and ultimately will enable more customers to shop.í

Nicholas Le Seelleur, Director SiteMorseô, comments: ëIt is disturbing to see that some of the UKís biggest retail brands are entering the vital Christmas period with websites that simply donít work properly. Retailers need to recognise that having an online offering is not just about design, but functionality. Online customers do not have the patience to tolerate delays, errors, and missing files, no matter how loyal they are to the brandís high street equivalent. A key part of the SiteMorse service is to provide hard facts and statistics on how a website is performing, and the results of this research show that many retailers need to continually evaluate their websites, to identify potentially costly flaws with the online purchasing process.í